CAIRO (AP) — The United States has stepped up pressure on Middle East allies to expel the Wagner Group, a military contractor with close ties to Russia’s president, from chaos-stricken Libya and Sudan where it expanded in recent years, regional officials told The Associated Press.

The U.S. effort described by officials comes as the Biden administration is making a broad push against the mercenaries. The U.S. has slapped new sanctions on the Wagner Group in recent months over its expanding role in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The group is owned by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Pentagon has described it as a surrogate for the Russian Defense Ministry. The Kremlin denies any connection.

The Biden administration has been working for months with regional powers Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to pressure military leaders in Sudan and Libya to end their ties with the group, according to more than a dozen Libyan, Sudanese and Egyptian officials. They asked for anonymity to speak freely and because they were not authorized to discuss the issue with the media.

“Wagner obsesses them (American officials),” said an Egyptian senior government official with direct knowledge of the talks. “It is at the top of every meeting.”

The group doesn’t announce its operations, but its presence is known from reports on the ground and other evidence. In Sudan, it was originally associated with former strongman Omar al-Bashir and now works with the military leaders who replaced him. In Libya, it’s associated with east Libya-based military commander Khalifa Hifter.

Wagner has deployed thousands of operatives in African and Middle Eastern countries including Mali, Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Syria. Its aim in Africa, analysts say, is to support Russia’s interests amid rising global interest in the resource-rich continent. Rights experts working with the U.S. on Jan. 31 accused the group of committing possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Mali, where it is fighting alongside government forces.

“Wagner tends to target countries with natural resources that can be used for Moscow’s objectives – gold mines in Sudan, for example, where the resulting gold can be sold in ways that circumvent Western sanctions,” said Catrina Doxsee, an expert on Wagner at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Prigozhin did not respond to a request for comment sent to the press department of the Concord Group, of which he is an owner.

The group’s role in Libya and Sudan was central to recent talks between CIA director William Burns and officials in Egypt and Libya in January. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also discussed the group with President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in a late-January trip to Cairo, Egyptian officials said. Weeks after the visits, Burns acknowledged in a Thursday speech at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., that after recent travel to Africa he was concerned about the Wagner’s growing influence in the continent.

“That is a deeply unhealthy development and we’re working very hard to counter it,” Burns said.

Burns and Blinken called on el-Sissi’s government to help convince Sudan’s ruling generals and Libya’s Hifter to end their dealings with the Wagner, an Egyptian official briefed on the talks said.

The group and its founder have been under U.S. sanctions since 2017, and the Biden administration in December announced new export restrictions to restrict its access to technology and supplies, designating it as a “significant transnational criminal organization.”

SUDAN

Leaders in Sudan have received repeated U.S. messages about Wagner’s growing influence in recent months, via Egypt and Gulf states, said a senior Sudanese official.

Abbas Kamel, the director of Egypt’s Intelligence Directorate Agency, conveyed Western concerns in talks in Khartoum last month with the head of Sudan’s ruling sovereign council, Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, the official said. Kamel urged Burhan to find a way to address Wagner’s “use of Sudan as a base” for operations in neighboring countries such as the Central African Republic, the official said.

Wagner started operating in Sudan in 2017, providing military training to intelligence and special forces, and to the paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, according to Sudanese officials and documents shared with The Associated Press.

The RSF, which grew out of the feared Janjaweed militias, is led by powerful general Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who has close ties with the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Dagalo has been sending troops to fight alongside the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen’s long-running civil war.

Wagner mercenaries are not operating in a combat role in Sudan, officials said. The group, which has dozens of operatives in the country, provides military and intelligence training, as well as surveillance and protection of sites and top officials.

Sudanese military leaders appear to have given Wagner control of gold mines in return. The documents show that the group has received mining rights through front companies with ties to Sudan’s powerful military and the RSF. Its activities are centered in gold-rich areas controlled by the RSF in Darfur, Blue Nile and other provinces, according to officials.

Two companies have been sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Treasury for acting as fronts for Wagner’s mining activities — Meroe Gold, a Sudanese gold mining firm, and its owner, the Russian-based M Invest firm. Prigozhin owns or controls both, according to the Treasury. Despite sanctions, Meroe Gold is still operating across Sudan.

The Russian mercenaries helped the paramilitary force consolidate its influence not only in the country’s far-flung regions, but also in the capital of Khartoum, where it helps run pro-RSF social media pages.

The main camp of Wagner mercenaries is in the contested village of Am Dafok on the borders between the Central African Republic and Sudan, according to the Darfur Bar Association, a legal group that focuses on human rights.

“Nobody can approach their areas,” said Gibreel Hassabu, a lawyer and member of the association.

LIBYA

In Libya, Burns held talks in Tripoli with Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, head of one of Libya’s two rival governments.

The CIA director also met with Hifter in eastern Libya, according to officials with Hifter’s forces. One official briefed on the meeting in al-Rajma military complex, the seat of Hifter’s command just outside Benghazi, said Wagner was the main issue discussed.

U.N. experts said Wagner mercenaries were deployed Libya since 2018, helping Hifter’s forces in their fight against Islamist militants in eastern Libya. The group was also involved in his failed offensive on Tripoli in April 2019.

The U.S. Africa Command, AFRICOM, estimated that some 2,000 Wagner mercenaries were in Libya between July-September 2020, before a cease-fire. The mercenaries were equipped with armored vehicles, air defense systems, fighter aircraft, and other equipment, which were supplied by Russia, according to the AFRICOM assessment. The report also said the Wagner group appeared to be receiving money from the UAE, a main foreign backer of Hifter.

Since the 2020 cease-fire, Wagner’s activities have centered around oil facilities in central Libya, and they have continued providing military training to Hifter forces, Libyan officials said. It is not clear how many Wagner mercenaries are still in Libya.

American officials have demanded that mercenaries be pulled out of oil facilities, another Libyan official said.

Hifter did not offer any commitments, but asked for assurances that Turkey and the Libyan militias it backed in western Libya will not initiate an attack on his forces in the coastal city of Sirte and other areas in central Libya.

Egypt, which has close ties with Hifter, has demanded that Wagner not be stationed close to its borders.

There is no evidence yet that the Biden administration’s pressure has yielded results in either Sudan or Libya, observers said.

Doxsee, the expert, said the U.S. and allies should resist promoting narratives that “Russia is bad and what we have to offer is good” and instead focus on offering better alternatives to Wagner.

“Ultimately, at the end of the day, Wagner is a business. If you can cut out the profit and you can reduce the business case for using Wagner, that’s what is going to make it a less appealing case,” she said.

___

AP writer Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report from Washington D.C.

On the night of February 3, Russian forces yet again fired artillery at Nikopol city in Dnipropetrovsk location.

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — The conversation between a state senator and a legislative aide started with a seemingly routine discussion about a bill. It suddenly spiraled as the senator allegedly harassed the aide because she had vaccinated her young child, plunging the Senate into a political drama that has divided South Dakota’s Republican Party.

The Senate, where lawmakers pride themselves on a genteel code of conduct as they work from wooden desks that have been there for generations, has seemed largely insulated from the forces roiling the wider GOP.

But even here, controversy was inevitable as an insurgent brand of Republicans look to challenge the establishment by pushing for hardline stands on social issues and passionately staking out positions that defy evidence, whether it is from medical authorities or election officials.

South Dakota is dominated by Republicans, and Gov. Kristi Noem, who is widely seen as mulling a 2024 White House bid, has branded it as the country’s most conservative state. But party tensions have grown in recent years.

A contrarian group has gained traction in the House with support from activists, and the State Freedom Caucus Network, which is looking to push politics rightward and disrupt business-as-usual in state Legislatures, including Montana, Wyoming, Illinois, Arizona and Mississippi, has organized in Pierre.

“It’s just sound and fury, it’s blaming each other, talking smack about each other — and yet on most of the issues the principles are the same,” said Michael Card, a former Republican official and political scientist at the University of South Dakota.

Nationally, the GOP has been plagued with similar strains of controversy. A politician like Rep. George Santos of New York is able to hold office despite lying about his background and facing multiple investigations into his personal and campaign finances. Former President Donald Trump remains an active and powerful force. And a handful of U.S. House holdouts were emboldened to hold up the selection of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

Statehouses have become fertile ground for nationalized politics, said Gerald Gamm, a professor of political science and history at the University of Rochester who has researched state-level politics.

“Polarization at the state level is probably as high today as it’s ever been,” he said.

Julie Frye-Mueller, the Republican senator involved in the incident with the aide, is among a group of hardline right-wing lawmakers who have clashed with top Republicans.

The encounter took place as the aide, who has not been publicly named, was discussing a draft bill in her office last week with Frye-Mueller and the senator’s husband, Mike Mueller, who was at the Capitol assisting his wife and later in the week testified in support of a resolution expressing sympathy for those facing charges for the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot.

Both the aide and Frye-Mueller have said their discussion turned to childhood vaccinations and breastfeeding, but their accounts differ.

According to the aide’s complaint, Frye-Mueller asked if she had vaccinated her child. When the aide said yes, the senator pointed her finger and aggressively told her the child could have health issues or die, according to the complaint.

She also alleged that Frye-Mueller asked her about breastfeeding. When the aide said she wished she could breastfeed, Frye-Mueller allegedly suggested that the aide’s husband could “suck on my breasts” to get milk to come in, the complaint said. Frye-Mueller’s husband was in the room at the time and “smiled and nodded,” it added.

Frye-Mueller disputed that account in testimony to a Senate committee investigating the complaint. She said it was the staffer who brought up breastfeeding. Frye-Mueller said she asked the aide whether she wanted advice she had received as a young mother, and when the aide said yes, she said, “Have your husband help.”

Frye-Mueller said she was “falsely accused” and called the aide’s complaint “shocking and filthy.” She also framed her comments as an issue of freedom of speech.

The senator also testified that she questioned whether newborn babies in Pierre were receiving vaccinations and informed the aide about legislation that would have eliminated school requirements for childhood vaccinations.

Republicans, who hold 31 out of 35 seats in the Senate, moved decisively and treated the incident as a personnel issue and a serious harassment allegation. The body suspended her last week, launched an investigation and on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted to censure her. The Senate also ended her suspension and adopted a report that concluded she harassed the aide.

Senate Republican leaders, who initially kept the allegations a secret, faced backlash from local party activists, a lawsuit from Frye-Mueller and accusations of political retribution.

During her Senate testimony, Frye-Mueller even pointed to a Facebook post from the Republican Senate Pro Tempore Lee Schoenbeck about the death of a family cat. She alleged it was somehow proof of a conspiracy that he was employing a “dead cat strategy” of drawing attention to something shocking to distract media attention from another story.

Schoenbeck said he was, in fact, referring to the death of a beloved family pet.

The longtime lawmaker, known for wearing Mister Rogers-style sweaters and firing colorful insults at right-wing legislators, has limited his comments on Frye-Mueller’s discipline and framed it as a personnel issue. Other Republican and Democratic leaders have sought to tone down the political context around her suspension and pointed out that all but one Senator voted for her censure.

In the past, however, Schoenbeck has called Frye-Mueller and others “wackadoodles” and funded campaigns to unseat them in primaries, with limited success.

Noem has also clashed with the right-wing lawmakers and last year supported a number of campaigns to def — again, with limited success.

As her political ambitions stretch beyond South Dakota, she has shown a willingness to concede to hardline conservatives. When House lawmakers advanced a bill in 2020 to ban gender-affirming medical procedures for transgender minors, she criticized the legislation as trying “to fill parenting gaps with more government.” This year her spokesman has voiced support for a similar proposal.

“When you have a supermajority, you will always tear yourself apart,” said Tom Dempster, a former Republican state senator who remains a close political watcher. “The primary system incentivizes extreme candidates.”

Back in Frye-Mueller’s home district, support for her remains strong. Activists in the Fall River County Republican Party drafted a resolution backing the senator.

“I’m conservative like she is — she votes the way I would,” said Ken Updike, a local party leader who pushed the resolution. Senate leaders, he said, “are more aligned with Democrats than they are Republicans.”

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine explained this in its hottest operational update revealed on Fb, Ukrinform reports.

“The Russian Federation does not prevent its intentions to wipe out the vital infrastructure of our state, continues to strike civilian objects and properties of the civilian populace. In excess of the past day, the enemy launched 4 missile strikes, like 2 on the civilian infrastructure of Kramatorsk metropolis, Donetsk region, as perfectly as 5 air strikes. They carried out additional than 70 assaults on civilian objects in Kherson and Mykolaiv locations using various start rocket techniques. Enemy strikes killed and wounded civilians,” the report states.

The menace of further more Russian air strikes and missile assaults on the whole territory of Ukraine remains large, the Basic Personnel warned.

The enemy, struggling heavy losses, continued to perform offensive functions in the Lyman, Bakhmut, Avdiivka and Novopavlivka instructions. Over the previous day, models of the Defense Forces of Ukraine repelled Russian attacks in the parts of Stelmakhivka, Nevske, and Bilohorivka in Luhansk region and Verkhniokamianske, Mykolaivka, Krasna Hora, Paraskoviivka, Bakhmut, Ivanivske, and Kurdiumivka in Donetsk area.

In the Volyn, Polissia, Sivershchyna, and Slobozhanshchyna instructions, the situation has improved considerably. No symptoms of enemy offensive groups’ development have been recorded. The occupiers shelled the districts of Kliusy, Hremyach and Yeline in Chernihiv region Muraveynia, Tovstodubove, Studenok, Katerynivka, Vovkivka, and Volfyne in Sumy region, and Veterynarne, Kozacha Lopan, Strelecha, Hlyboke, Zelene, Starytsia, Ohirtseve, Hatyshche, Vovchansk, Vovchanski Khutory, Okhrimivka, and Novomlynsk in Kharkiv area.

In the Kupiansk course, the enemy shelled the regions of Dvorichna, Holubivka, Kupiansk, Kucherivka, Kyslivka and Kotliarivka in Kharkiv location and Novoselivske and Stelmakhivka in Luhansk location.

In the Lyman course, Terny, Makiivka, Chervonopopivka, Dibrova and Torske in Luhansk location came beneath enemy strikes.

In the Bakhmut way, the enemy shelled Spirne, Bilohorivka, Paraskoviivka, Vesele, Bakhmut and Ivanivske in Donetsk location.

In the Avdiivka way, Avdiivka, Tonenke, Vesele, Sieverne, Vodiane, Pervomaiske, Nevelske, Krasnohorivka, Heorhiivka, Maryinka, Pobieda, and Novomykhailivka came beneath enemy hearth.

In the Novopavlivka route, the occupiers shelled Bohoiavlenka, Vuhledar, Prechystivka, Velyka Novosilka, and Neskuchne in Donetsk location.

In the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson directions, areas of much more than 40 settlements came less than mortar, barrel and rocket artillery strikes. Among them are Vremivka of Donetsk location Huliaipilske and Kamianske in Zaporizhzhia area, as perfectly as Kherson, Zolota Balka, Mykhailivka, Havrylivka, Mylove, Burhunka, Novotiahynka and Kizomys in Kherson location.

All through the past day, the Ukrainian Air Power introduced four strikes on the places of concentration of Russian troops. In addition, Ukrainian defenders ruined a Russian Merlin UAV. Models of the missile forces and artillery of Ukraine’s Protection Forces, for their portion, struck 3 parts of focus of enemy manpower and a command write-up.

As described by Ukrinform, as of February 2, 2023, the Armed Forces of Ukraine eradicated about 129,030 Russian invaders.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is a man who writes down his thoughts. And some of those handwritten musings over his decades of public service are now a part of a special counsel’s investigation into the handling of classified documents.

It isn’t clear yet what the investigators are looking for by taking custody of notes from his time as vice president and his decades in the Senate that were found in his Delaware homes in Rehoboth Beach and Wilmington.

Biden’s attorneys did not say whether the notes were considered to be classified, only that they were removed. But over his 36 years in the Senate and eight as vice president, Biden had a front-row seat to a lot of highly sensitive moments in U.S. history, including the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the 2011 death of Osama bin Laden and unfolding political turmoil in Ukraine.

The special counsel is working to determine how classified information from Biden’s time as senator and vice president came to wind up in his home and former office — and whether any mishandling involved criminal intent or was unintentional. But they’ll also have to determine whether the notes they took are considered personal and therefore belong to Biden, and would then likely be returned to him.

Under the Presidential Records Act, records of a presidential administration generally belong with the National Archives, especially classified items. There are some exceptions, including when records are determined to be purely personal.

But even a handwritten note can be considered classified if someone is recording observations related to a classified document or briefing. Such notes can be deemed classified even if not marked as such.

Larry Pfeiffer, a former senior director of the White House situation room and chief of staff to retired CIA Director Michael Hayden, said that when he took notes during secret or top-secret meetings, he would mark each page by specific levels of classification.

“It’s pretty clear in those meetings when they’re hearing classified information,” he said. When Pfeiffer left the CIA, he submitted his notebooks to the agency archives.

Longtime aides say they believe Biden has been keeping personal diaries for decades, though the only public glimpse of them so far has come in Biden’s book “Promise Me, Dad,” which chronicled the then-vice president’s heartache and grief over his son Beau’s fatal cancer diagnosis.

In the book, Biden quotes passages written in his diary about Beau’s condition and death that were written on Air Force Two, in the vice president’s residence at the Naval Observatory in Washington, and at his Wilmington home, as well as one jotted down as he weighed whether to run for president in 2016. In the book, Biden describes taking the notes as he navigated being a supportive parent for an ailing family member and largely maintaining his official schedule of meetings and calls.

He details how he had a secure phone installed at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston so he could work while he was there with his son as Beau underwent treatment. But he also wrote about his debate over whether he’d run for office in 2016:

“‘A lot happening,’ I wrote in my diary when I finally got some downtime in Wilmington the next weekend. ‘Need to be careful it doesn’t get away from me. I need to slow down, ramp down my schedule.’”

It’s unknown whether handwritten notes may have been turned over to the Department of Justice by former Vice President Mike Pence or whether any of former President Donald Trump’s writings from his time in office was found during the FBI’s search of his Florida estate last year.

It was also unclear whether recent former presidents and vice presidents would make any of their personal notes written during their time in office available for review to determine whether they contained any potential federal records or information that should be classified.

There’s a precedent in keeping personal records personal: Access to Ronald Reagan’s personal diaries was sought after he left office by his former national security adviser John Poindexter as he faced trial for his role in the Iran-Contra affair. A federal judge accepted Reagan’s invocation of executive privilege to shield the diaries from disclosure.

Reagan frequently wrote about the substance of his official meetings — including details on classified sessions — and impressions of world leaders, often commingled with mundane details about his life like his dinner companions and personal calls. But it wasn’t until after Reagan’s death and with the consent of his widow, Nancy Reagan, that they were published.

There have been multiple cases in recent years of high-level officials mishandling notes about classified operations. Former CIA Director David Petraeus was prosecuted for his handling of eight notebooks of classified and unclassified notes he collected during his time leading U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. According to a plea agreement, Petraeus kept the notebooks in his private possession and allowed his biographer, with whom he was having an affair, to review them.

He pleaded guilty in 2015 to one count of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material and received probation.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was found by the FBI to have discussed classified material in emails kept on her private server. Some of those emails had classified information at the time they were sent, while others were subsequently classified during the FBI’s investigation of her use of the server.

Then-FBI Director James Comey recommended against charging Clinton in 2016 because he said there was not clear evidence Clinton or her subordinates intended to violate laws about classified information.

Biden’s lawyers were closing up his office at the Penn Biden Center think tank last November when they came across classified documents in a locked closet. The records were turned over to the Justice Department. But after Biden’s lawyers searched his Wilmington home and found additional classified items, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate. Biden has said he was surprised the documents were there, and has cooperated with investigators, including voluntarily consenting to the FBI searches.

When FBI agents searched Biden’s Wilmington home last month, they “also took for further review personally handwritten notes from the vice-presidential years,” according to his lawyer, Bob Bauer. When the FBI searched Biden’s Rehoboth Beach home on Wednesday, they took “some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President” but found no other classified documents, according to Bauer.

The White House has refused to comment on what was in Biden’s notes, other than to say some of the writing pertained to his time as vice president.

“I think that they want to make sure that the Justice Department has access to the information that they need to sift through materials as a part of this ongoing investigation,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said Wednesday. “And so I’m not going to characterize too much of the underlying contents.”